This hybrid might be “Honeysuckle” but the tag is long gone. This was a tiny plant from Molbak’s nursery that I bought for my office when I was just starting my Lung Association job–about 20 years ago! This plant is a survivor. It is similar to the other cane begonia that I have, but is shorter, has fewer spots on the leaves, and the flowers are lighter in color. I keep it in the greenhouse now and I haven’t taken great care of it. It keeps on growing, though, and blooming late in the year when the greenhouse really needs color.

My 2020 plans for this plant are well underway–I potted on into a bigger pot and better soil and fed it really well. It is already responding! I expect a large batch of flowers come August.

That this plant continues to exist in the greenhouse is somewhat miraculous. I started it from seed at least ten years ago and have done very little to maintain it or care for it since. I leave it in a large pot in the greenhouse all summer. It leafs out in February/March, blooms early (May/June) and then goes dormant in the hottest part of the year.

The other miracle of this species is its fragrance. It fills the greenhouse with a sweet, clean scent. The flowers are pretty, too, thought hey seem prone to predation by insects.

Since I’m appreciating this plant more appropriately this year, my 2020 plans include topdressing it’s pot, dropping a Jobe’s spike in there and hoping the plant will grow more and spread a bit.

My oldest of these shrubs is one I started from seed gathered in Tonasket around 2015. I planted it out into the memory garden in 2018 and it is thriving there. In my quest for native plants, I’m excited that this one is growing and has started feed some local fauna–caterpillars and pollinators.

This year, the plant has sent out a bunch of suckers under the landscape fabric and is threatening to take over the memory garden. For 2020, I will wait until these are well-rooted, then move them to the native plant garden and pot some up and pass them to neighbors.

The flower color of the usual Oriental poppy clashes badly with most other colors. However, it contrasts nicely with blue fowers and creates a stir with deep yellows. Luckily, I’m not a good enough gardener to eliminate every clashing flower scenario I see! And some of the color variants of this plant are remarkable.

I grow these plants from seed. When we first moved to the house about 25 years ago, I grew a strain called Pizzicato, which is shorter than the type species in a mix of colors. A few of these plants still survive in our driveway bed. I started seeds of the Fruit Punch strain in 2018 for use in the memory garden. I planted out about ten plants in 2019 and they are blooming in 2020. Several of them feature nice, soft pink blooms. Others are the orange-scarlet clashing color. I’m hoping for a white one or two.

My 2020 plans for this plant are to keep them watered and fed and hope to get them to grow a bit more so they throw more blooms next year.

Hardy geraniums are one of my favorite garden plants. Even the rambunctious ones have their merits, but this sterile hybrid has good manners to go with her fantastic looks. I don’t remember which mail order house this plant came from–it was planted in the spring of 2018 into the memory garden that replaced the hell strip along N 137th Street.

I’ve read wonderful things about G. psilostemon, which is one of Patricia’s parents, especially from Christopher Lloyd, who used that plant to great effect. I’m happy that I ended up with Patricia instead because I think G. psilostemon would have been too boisterous for this narrow flower bed.

Hardy geraniums tend to be carefree. This plant doesn’t ask for much. Shearing it back after the first flush of bloom seems to bring a longer blooming season. I feed it every year and water sometimes.

My 2020 plans for this plant are just to keep it healthy and try to get more/better photos of it.

My favorite seed house for perennial ornamentals is Chiltern’s in the UK. I grew a packet of mixed Campanula seeds they offered and ended up with just two adult plants that survived the transition to the garden and beyond. One is a blue C. lactiflora and the other is a white version.

I’m familiar with more diminutive bellflowers. But these milky bellflowers get to be tall and full–close to four feet tall for me and probably three feet across when they are in full bloom.

I don’t have as many photos as I should of these plants, so I’ll make sure to add some new ones this year.

My 2020 plans for them are to keep them fed and watered and tied to the apple trees they are planted near.

Finally, most every plant that needs to come out of the greenhouse for warm weather is on the patio or under the Douglas fir tree. During the process of cleaning up the plants and potting some of them on they mostly end up looking pretty tattered or small. I wanted to get a “before” photo of them so when they grow and reach their summer potential we can really see the contrast. Also, I need to convince myself that my cruel pruning was for the plants’ own good.

We should have some interesting flowers and foliage from all these pots–plants like Monarda citriodora, Setcreasea pallida, five kinds of begonias, and more.

There are far too many Rhododendron hybrids out there for me to easily figure out which unlabeled varieties have ended up in my yard. I consider these shrubs family favorites because my parents bought a house in Kent, Washington that had many different varieties planted all around. My job was to snap off the green seed pods from dozens of giant shrubs–it was a big, sticky, messy job! Certainly it is a testament to the beauty of these plants that after such torture in my youth, I still love them.

We have two good-sized purple rhodies planted under/near the picture window in the living room. I think the variety might be Purple Splendor, but so many of them look alike. It is a pleasing, rich tone, but not heavy and dark like some of the purple clones. Also on the front of the house in front of the bedroom window is a large-flowered pink clone. We also have three rhodies in the woodland garden. The neighbors have a large shrub on our fenceline, as well, so we get to enjoy those flowers from branches that fine there way on our side.

Most experts now agree that deadheading isn’t worth the time and trouble! Is it possible my parents knew that and sent me out there, anyway, just to keep me busy?

My 2020 plans for these plants is to keep them watered, as needed, and prune them right after flowering to hopefully keep them contained a bit, but still blooming big next spring.

Recently, I discovered this plant is native to Washington State, which is great. The plant I have is from sister Cate and it has lived here in north Seattle for five or six years. This is a very stylish plant, with fantastic form and color. And this year, for the first time, it is blooming for us.

For 2020, I plan to take some cuttings of this plant so I can have more of them. I may set some out into the memory garden and the native plant garden, as well. This plant takes almost no care–just water during the summer when we water everything else.

Another favorite David Austin rose (but what David Austin rose isn’t a favorite?), this beauty appears more yellowish in the shady nook in which it has found itself than the orangey-gold as portrayed in the Austin catalog. Regardless, it is fantastic and photogenic.

Like the other struggling Austin roses in the orchard garden, I will feed and weed this plant in 2020 and work to propagate it so that I can have its progeny in a sunnier spot. Failing that, I may move the plants themselves late next winter to the memory garden.